Alan Jones, the Australian who became the first driver to win the Formula 1 title for Williams, has died after a brief illness. He was 80.
Jones was the 1980 F1 world champion.
“We are extremely saddened to announce the passing of our beloved Alan,” his wife, Amanda, said in a statement on Thursday. “He will be dearly missed and fondly remembered by those closest to him, as well as the many fans whose support he was always grateful for.”
Jones was the second and last Australian to win the world championship in an F1 career that featured 12 victories and 24 podium finishes. He followed Jack Brabham, a three-time champion in the 1950s-60s.
Williams said Jones formed an “extraordinary bond” with the team's founders to win the title in its fourth season as an F1 constructor.
“He set the standard for Williams champions: a fast, uncompromising racer with a challenger mentality who loved motor racing and dedicated his life to it,” Williams said in a statement. “He is a true Australian icon and a Williams legend, and he will be dearly missed. We send our love and thoughts to the Jones family and all his friends.”
F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali hailed “a true great of our sport and an extraordinary racer,” adding: “Alan was a formidable competitor, a natural leader and an icon who inspired generations of fans, particularly in his beloved Australia.”
Jones was known for his aggressive driving style and abrasive personality. “If someone passed me, I took it personally,” he said on a 2019 podcast.
In an era when deaths and serious injuries weren’t uncommon in F1, Jones started each year by checking his life insurance and making travel plans for his wife to return to Australia if he was killed, but said he never personally feared death in a race.
“I never worried about the dangers,” he said. “I worried about the money.”
Success was far from assured in Frank Williams' second attempt at launching an F1 team after years toward the back of the grid.
Frank Williams was adept at defusing Jones' temper and keeping him focused, car designer Patrick Head was at the cutting edge of F1 thinking, and wealthy Saudi Arabian sponsors funded the team to deliver on its ambitions. On top of that, Jones' driving style and physical strength were a good fit for the team’s FW07 car.
Jones was runner-up in 1979 before going one better in 1980. He didn’t seek to make friends with other F1 drivers.
“They were just things that had to be passed,” was how he described his rivals in the 2019 podcast “Beyond The Grid.” After one public feud with his Argentine teammate Carlos Reutemann, Jones needed a police escort for his next race in Argentina.
Disappointed that Ferrari went back on what Jones later claimed was a signed contract for him to drive for the Italian team in 1977, he bore a grudge.
“When I used to drive down pit lane and they were working on their cars, I’d give them a little wave,” he said later. “Now, I might have only used one finger but it was a wave!”
Jones was born in Melbourne in 1946 and was the son of a successful amateur racing driver. He moved to Britain in the late 1960s and funded his journey to F1 by buying and selling old vans.
Jones drove for small teams when he arrived in F1. His first win for Shadow in 1977 from 14th on the grid came as such a surprise to organizers of the Austrian Grand Prix that they hadn’t prepared a recording of the Australia anthem for the podium ceremony. Jones later recalled that “a drunk played ‘Happy Birthday’ on a trumpet” instead.
After an unsuccessful title defense in 1981 — Jones believed he’d driven better than before but the car let him down — he headed back to Australia and bought a farm. Homesickness and a dislike for the British weather played a part.
Still, Jones was soon bored of his new life as a cattle breeder and made a one-off F1 comeback in 1983 with Arrows before returning with Haas — no relation to the current F1 team of the same name. The car wasn’t competitive and Jones had a best finish of fourth before leaving F1 again in 1986.
Away from F1, Jones won the 1978 Can-Am sportscar title and was third in his only IndyCar race in 1983. Jones kept racing in Australia’s V8 Supercars series until 2002, when he was 55.
He was inducted into the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame and Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
Jones stayed around the paddock as a TV commentator and race steward but was critical of modern drivers, who he called “prima donnas” and “too corporate.”
Original team owner Frank Williams, who died in November 2021, was fond of Jones and once described him as “a man’s man” who was “great fun to be with.”
“He never needed propping up mentally, because he was a very determined and bullish character,” Williams said. “He didn’t need any babysitting or hand-holding and that’s the way it should be. It shouldn’t be necessary for me to ask a driver if he is happy, or if he needs his underwear changed.”
AP Sports Writer Dennis Passa in Brisbane, Australia, contributed.
See AP’s full auto racing coverage here
FILE -Australian F1 driver Alan Jones, sits in the pit complex before the Qualifying round of the GP Masters at Kylami race circuit in Johannesburg, South Africa, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE -Three legends of Formula One racing and all ex world champions from left Alan Jones, Australia, Stirling Moss, Great Britain and Jack Brabham, Australia in discussion at the track in Melbourne, March 7, 1996.(AP Photo/Steve Holland, File)
MILAN (AP) — Multiple flights in Europe were targeted by bomb threats on Thursday, forcing emergency landings, searches and military escorts to airports in France, Italy and Bulgaria. A British official called them “malicious hoaxes" that followed another rash of hoax threats earlier this week.
More than a dozen flights from cities including Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan and Warsaw were confirmed to have been targeted with bomb threats, most diverted to other airports for emergency landings while others landed safely at their destinations. So far inspections have not turned up hazardous or suspicious materials.
Britain’s Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told British broadcasters that flights across Europe have been hit by “malicious hoax threats.”
The European Union’s Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said that “any threats against civilians are unacceptable,” and that the EU’s executive branch was in contact with affected member countries.
“It is too early to draw conclusions on whether the reported incidents are linked,” Tzitzikostas told reporters in Dublin. “National investigations remain ongoing.”
He said that an EU level information-sharing mechanism on aviation security had been activated, and that “we don’t have information yet whether this is a cyberattack.”
Such threats are not new, but the latest incidents come at a time of increased geopolitical tensions and other disruptions, including attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, drone incursions in Europe and mysterious triggers to alert apps. Authorities have warned that hybrid threats abound.
A flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to a military air base in western France because of a bomb threat, the French prime minister’s office said. The flight landed safely at the base in Evreux in Normandy, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office said.
All 151 passengers and six crew members were safe and military bomb disposal teams were examining the plane, the office said. The passengers aboard the Aer Lingus Dublin-Rome flight were questioned and checked in groups of 10 inside the airport, the prime minister's office said.
Hours later, the plane was sitting on the tarmac with a Red Cross vehicle nearby and explosives experts with dogs seen examining the aircraft.
Italian authorities alerted France’s government to the bomb threat on the Aer Lingus flight, and a French warplane escorted it to the Evreux base, the prime minister’s office said. An investigation was opened by French aviation security authorities.
Italian air force fighter jets escorted a Finnair flight from Helsinki to Rome after an email threat was received, according to an airport official with knowledge of the situation. It landed safely at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport at around 9:30 a.m., and no explosive materials were found during an inspection by police bomb disposal experts, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Finnair said that two of its flights, including the one that landed in Rome, “faced unfounded hoax bomb scares." Nothing was found aboard Finnair AY1761, and the plane was scheduled to depart for Helsinki.
The other flight, operated by Jettime, from Helsinki to Vienna landed safely at its destination, and was expected to return to service after an inspection was completed, Finnair said.
Greece’s Aegean Airlines confirmed Thursday that two flights — one from Thessaloniki to Milan and another from Athens to Vienna — received bomb threats that proved to be hoaxes. The airline said all security protocols were implemented and that the flights departed from both Milan and Vienna after it was confirmed that the threats were “baseless.”
Czech police said searches of four other planes that landed in Prague after being targeted by bomb threats found nothing suspicious. They did not give details on where the flights originated and said they took precautions despite not finding the threats credible.
A LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw to Brussels landed at its destination, where inspections found no hazardous or suspicious items, the airline said.
A Wizz Air flight from Milan to Bucharest landed safely in Bucharest following a bomb threat, airport spokesman Teo Postelnicu said. Checks turned up no threat, and air traffic was continuing on schedule.
A flight to Warsaw landed in Vienna following a mail to Polish authorities containing a vague threat, said Stefan Loidl, a police spokesperson in Lower Austria province. Nothing was found and the plane continued to Warsaw.
He said there was also a vague threat to Vienna Airport concerning four other flights, which he declined to identify, but operations were not disrupted.
Polish authorities checked a LOT flight that was about to depart from Warsaw to Paris on Thursday morning after a threat was reported at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport, said airport spokesman Piotr Rudzki. No threat was ultimately identified. One runway at Chopin Airport was temporarily closed while authorities carried out standard security procedures.
Three Ryanair flights bound for Sofia, Bulgaria, had to make emergency landings because of bomb threats on board. Two of the flights, one from Copenhagen, Denmark, and the other from Madrid, landed safely at Sofia’s Vasil Levski Airport, airport officials told reporters. The third Sofia-bound flight, from London’s Stansted Airport to Sofia, had been diverted and landed safely in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second-largest city, Plovdiv Airport CEO Krassimir Peshev said.
The three planes that made an emergency landing in Sofia and Plovdiv were escorted through Bulgarian airspace by fighter jets, the Ministry of Defense said.
Several flights across Europe received hoax bomb threats earlier this week that prompted searches, diversions and, in one case, an escort by the Italian air force until landing, officials said.
The flights included Polish airline LOT, Scandinavian Airlines, Wizz Air and Ryanair. The hoax threats came after a plane headed for Bulgaria was diverted to Hungary after receiving a similar bomb threat while in the air. No one was injured.
——-
Charlton reported from Paris and Biller from Rome. Associated Press writers throughout Europe contributed to this report.
Passengers wheel their luggage outside the main entrance to departures at Brussels international airport in Zaventem, Belgium, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Omar Havana)
An Aer Lingus Airbus A320 aircraft is seen at Evreux military air base after a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to France amid reports of bomb threats targeting multiple flights across Europe, in Evreux, France, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
Passengers check their flight at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, after a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to France amid reports of bomb threats targeting multiple flights across Europe. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
An Aer Lingus Airbus A320 aircraft is seen at Evreux military air base after a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to France amid reports of bomb threats targeting multiple flights across Europe, in Evreux, France, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
An Aer Lingus Airbus A320 aircraft is seen at Evreux military air base after a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to France amid reports of bomb threats targeting multiple flights across Europe, in Evreux, France, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
